Passengers who did things like pay for their tickets with cash or travel to countries suspected of sponsoring terrorism could face lengthy hand searches of their luggage

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It's been a year since Vice President Al Gore's Commission on Aviation Safety and Security issued its final report on the state of air travel in the United States -- and made sweeping recommendations for improvements at the nation's airports.

Those recommendations called for increased training of personnel, upgrading of systems, implementation of existing technologies, and establishment of new procedures for passenger identification and baggage/cargo handling.

One of the most talked about of those recommendations: passenger profiling -- detecting passengers who could pose a security risk based on travel history and past criminal record. Under the system, passengers who did things like pay for their tickets with cash or travel to countries suspected of sponsoring terrorism could face lengthy hand searches of their luggage.

Souhelia Al-Jadda underwent such a search when she flew to Syria to visit her grandmother.

"It was a three-hour process," she said. "Three hours of humiliation. It was three hours of feeling like I was a criminal and I had done something wrong."

Al-Jadda didn't file a formal complaint at the time. But the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) says it's gotten more than 300 complaints from Arab Americans and people of Middle Eastern appearance who claim the profiling system unfairly targeted them.

Since January 1, however, passengers have been getting the once-over from computers instead of potentially more subjective human personnel. With software now picking out those who require greater scrutiny, the government believes earlier problems -- or perception of problems -- should disappear.

"It's not based upon any kind of discriminatory factors," said U.S. Department of Transportation general counsel Nancy McFadden. "It shouldn't be operated, and in our view, does not operate in a discriminatory way."

The new screening system has only limited hand searches of bags, and incorporates random searches of all passengers.

Some security experts call profiling a stop-gap measure while airports work on acquiring a new generation of expensive high-tech devices to detect bombs or weapons -- more recommendations from the Gore commission's report.

"The problem we face now is that that equipment is just not in every airport," said security expert Kurt Wurzberger. "And until we get that uniformity across the board from the physical security standpoint, there have to be other deterrents."

Meanwhile, Arab American groups are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

"We are all on a new clean slate and under the new procedure,," said the ADC's Houeida Saad. "If the complaints continue we would have to resort to litigation,"

For its part, the government says it is sensitive to Arab American concerns, and is doing everything it can to make sure the profiling system does not discriminate.

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Related stories:

• New FAA passenger screening rules go into effect - January 2, 1998
• Justice Department says air passenger screening not ethnically discriminatory - October 2, 1997
• Gore announces proposals to fight air terrorism - September 5, 1996

Related sites:

• Commission on Aviation Safety and Security
• The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
• Federal Aviation Administration

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